I was an intern at Earthen Routes – a community farm located in Navi Mumbai, India. The farm plot is owned by Tata ACTREC (Advanced Centre for cancer treatment, research, and education). This centre provides free treatment for children with cancer at St. Judes, located inside their campus. Earthen Routes is located right beside St. Judes, working to produce organic and nutritious food harvests for children’s treatment.

When I say that Earthen Routes is a community farm, it means a farm purely run by volunteers, alongside a manager/caretaker of the farm. Anyone and everyone are welcome at the farm to volunteer. These volunteers contribute to the functioning of the farm by engaging in various activities. They work on the farm plot, performing the farm tasks needed to produce the harvest and overall maintenance of the farm. They also engage in tasks which help in farm promotion or conduct workshops on the farm to attract a larger audience. They can also volunteer by donating funds, but more emphasis is given on their physical labor than only financial.

My role as an intern on the farm was to see to the day-to-day activity of Earthen Routes. I worked under Manasvi Tyagi, the founder of Earthen Routes. She told me the tasks which were to be done every day and some tasks which I could do by myself, without any assistance. One task she provided me with was taking care of the nursery. That task was only for me from day 1 to the last day of the internship. That one job in itself taught me so much about gardening. Taking care of the nursery involved first identifying various plant species. I got to spend a lot of time closely with many plant species and monitor their growth collectively. After specie identification came pest identification. Many young saplings are bound to catch pests as the farm does not use fertilizers. One way the farm prevents pests is by multi-cropping on the farm beds where pest-repellent plants are planted with vegetables or legumes to prevent pest infestation. But when it comes to a nursery, multi-cropping is not possible as each sapling of a plant is kept in one area to monitor growth. Thus, pest infestation was a common occurrence among those young saplings. Once I learnt to identify pest infestation, I learnt to do ‘home remedies to get rid of pest infestation. For example, Ceylon spinach saplings often have white-spotted pests on their leaves. If identified sooner, one can simply remove the leaves with the pests and let the other leaves be on the sapling. This helps to prevent the spread of pests on the entire sapling. Because the nursery is a small area, it gets easier to cater to each sapling’s needs.

After being able to deal with pests, I learnt how to propagate saplings. With the knowledge of species identification, I used to enter the farm beds to locate the plant species which Mansi wanted to be propagated.  The chief reason behind propagation was to increase the number of certain plants which may be less in number on the farm plot. Giving customized attention to sapling help in their overall growth. Hence, propagation was a useful tool to use if there was a maintained nursery. I learnt how different plant species can be propagated. For example, the betel leaf has roots coming out of its stem as it is a runner. Thus, while propagating, I made sure I did not cut its roots but rather uprooted it carefully from the ground and planted that root area again in the small sapling bottles I created. While, for lemongrass, I had to make sure I uprooted the bulb of its root for it to grow more roots when put in a sapling bottle.

Now that I have touched the subject of sapling bottles, I would like to expand a bit more o that learning. It is the most efficient, effective and sustainable way of creating new saplings. The farm believes in sustainability, so it often told its volunteers to donate used and empty plastic bottles. The plastic bottles were then washed a little, cut from the top, and welded with a few holes on their surface area and then filled with mulch and soil. This then became the little pot for new young saplings of various plants. I loved making new sapling bottles from reused plastic bottles, followed by propagating new plants. This was an endless process which I catered to doing the entire internship month. While doing this, I also got the opportunity to teach this skill to a few volunteers. This helped me grasp these concepts better and strategize in developing the nursery better with more experience.

There was a lot more I did as an intern which taught me the basics of farming, especially permaculture farming. The farm aims at becoming a self-sustainable food forest where it hopes to survive without any external manual labour. As the farm is relatively new, 10 years old, it may take a couple more decades to reach that state. Till then, Manasvini is trying her best to incorporate methods like multi-cropping, plant companionship, growing native plants, and integrating farm playout with the landscape, climate, water availability and such. All these methods come under the principles of permaculture.

There are 3 main principles of permaculture which gave birth to these various farming techniques. These principles are earth care, people care, and fair share. The first principle talks about farming while catering to Earth’s resources. Rather than the exploitation of those resources, it believes in integration. Building the farm beds according to the slope of the land, growing plants according to their heights for reducing competition for sunlight, and using drip irrigation are a few examples of making sure the earth is not exploited but rather integrated with the farm structure.

The second principle talks about the necessity for a community in order to grow together. A presence of community on a farm will help nurture the growth of plants and humans. It is scientifically backed that the more humans interact with nature, plants and their surroundings, the more the plants/nature flourish. Of course, the interaction does not mean exploitation but rather respectful observation, talking, taking care and such. The presence of a community will help bring about a change on a large scale in such farmlands. Thus, Earthen Routes chose to be a community farm than a private one.

Last but not the least, the last principle talks about fair share between all animals and plants. It believes that each entity of nature has a right to exist on the farmland, be it a dog, a worm, a snake, a rat, a butterfly, or anything else. The existence of every entity creates a small ecosystem of sorts which helps maintain balance in the environment. For example, there was a period at Earthen Routes when snakes suddenly disappeared. That led to a high increase in rats existing on the farm. It created issues like harvest being half eaten or contaminated which did not result well in the output of the farm. Once the snakes came back, everything came back to a balance. Thus, any volunteer who chooses to volunteer at Earthen Routes is made aware of the last principle of permaculture so, they do not harm any living being existing on the farm plot.

There was a lot more that I learnt but most of that learning was based on these core principles of permaculture farming. Manasvini constantly engaged in discussion with me to explain each of these principles, ad show their workings on the farm. This gave me a huge insight into living with nature. I would say it made me humble as a person as I began to see nature as something bigger than humanity unlike how we humans live our lives today.

I hope I can take this learning forward in my academic interests and work on redefining our relationship with nature.